CreativePro.Com Features

Flickr Friday: November 6, 2009

Editor in Chief — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:27:25 -0700

Most images showcased in Flickr Friday have Creative Commons licenses that allow for sharing and remixing, as long as proper attribution is given to the image originator.

This week's Flickr Friday installment is a demonstration of that license in action. The first image is a photo (titled only "IMG_0438") shot by axio in Hofburg, Vienna:

Flickr Friday Archives

Editor in Chief — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:27:39 -0600

This weekly CreativePro.com feature showcases graphics (photos, vector illustrations, and videos) from online image-sharing site Flickr. Some of these have even been approved for commercial use under the Creative Commons license. That means that as long as you follow the license details outlined by the creator, you can use the materials in your own work for free!

Flickr Friday: July 31, 2009

Industry Analysis: The Quiet Revolution in Proprietary File Formats

admin — Thu, 22 Jan 2004 03:10:12 -0700

From The Pfeiffer Report. To learn more about The Pfeiffer Report, click here.

InDesign Magazine: Tip of the Week Archive

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:43:16 -0600

We regularly update this compilation of the Tip-of-the-Week mailings from InDesign Magazine. To receive the tips in your in-box, sign up here.

Break Facing Pages into Single Pages
Here's how to convert a facing-pages document into a single-page, non-facing pages document without affecting master page items:

Free For All: Photoshop Brushes, Fonts, and Image Tools

Editor in Chief — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:59:51 -0600

ColorSuckr
Print and Web designers and illustrators often want to extract one or more colors from an image. Typically, it's a tedious process of clicking the Eyedropper tool to pick up the desired color, switching to the Swatches panel, and creating and naming a new swatch, or hovering the Eyedropper tool over pixels and writing down the color value from the Info panel. The more colors in the image, the longer and more boring this process is likely to become.

Until now.

Create Better Marketing Postcards

Editor in Chief — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:46:53 -0600

This article originally appeared on Print Soup, the blog of PrintingForLess.com, CreativePro.com's parent company.

A Question of Character: Finding What You Need in Your Fonts, Part 1

Editor in Chief — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:59:32 -0600

When I asked a few columns back about your interest in Unicode, a lot of hands shot up. But just as many of you said you wanted to know how to get at characters that have been hiding in your fonts since long before Unicode was dreamt up. Unicode may be the key to understanding and using fonts with very large character sets, but on a daily basis most of us use smaller -- and often much older -- fonts that present mysteries of their own.

Creativeprose: Wacky Web Site of the Week Archive

admin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:54:28 -0600

November 2, 2009
Have your fortune told by The Great Bernie.
http://www.TheGreatBernie.com

October 26, 2009
Read about (and try, if you're brave) classic home science projects from the early to mid-twentieth century.
http://bizarrelabs.com

October 19, 2009

Flickr Friday: October 30, 2009

Editor in Chief — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:40:57 -0600

Flickr user madmolecule took the shot below with a matchbox pinhole camera loaded with 200 speed 35mm Fuji film. Exposure was “maybe a minute or two -- I've given up trying to use a stopwatch; I just eyeball it now.” So that vignetting you see is the real thing, not software trickery.

If you’re not familiar with the wonderful world of pinhole cameras, take a minute to check out these fun and informative links:

Free For All: An Awesome Assortment

Editor in Chief — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 02:23:51 -0600

Your Handwriting as a Font
Back in the 1990s, design-related magazines carried ads for mail-order services that converted your handwriting into a font. You had to wait to receive a template on which you'd draw each character or glyph of the font, and then you had to wait for your TrueType font to arrive on a 3.5-inch floppy. Now there’s a free online service that converts your handwriting into a font in as little as five minutes.

Inside the Publishing Revolution: How the LaserWriter and Photoshop Changed the World

admin — Tue, 03 Dec 2002 03:56:56 -0700

Excerpted from "Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story" (Adobe Press/Peachpit Press).

Font Fatigue: The Character Palette

admin — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 23:00:00 -0600

The Character Palette in Mac OS X is a very cool font viewer and character selector -- sort of like KeyCaps on steroids (see Figure 1).

Unfortunately, for some reason Apple made it very hard to get to initially. After you "install" it, it shows up in the menu bar of every non-Classic application (see Figure 2).

Flickr Friday: October 23, 2009

Editor in Chief — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:32:24 -0600

Flickr user Sonicsquirtgun shot this warmly lit portrait using a 50mm lens and… an iPhone. The iPhone wasn't the camera, but the light source. There are several iPhone apps made expressly for this purpose.

Antique Gothic Grotesque: Deciphering the Typeface Name Game

Editor in Chief — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:18:51 -0600

The previous installment of this column opened the can of worms known as type classification. It's the process of assigning names to various kinds of type. The question of whether a face should be called an italic or an oblique is just the tip of the iceberg.

For example, what label would you apply to the following face?

Flickr Friday: October 9, 2009

Editor in Chief — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:36:36 -0600

You may recognize Derek Powazek's name. He's a pioneering Web designer, an in-demand speaker at conferences such as An Event Apart, and the co-founder of JPG Magazine. One of his current gigs is giving social media advice to HP Labs' MagCloud, a print-on-demand service for self-publishing magazines.

And that's where Flickr comes in. Let's hear it in his own words: